Anyone who has traveled on UK trains the past several years will have noticed that trains are more popular then ever and stats prove it:

(Source: Office of Rail Regulation's National Rail Trends for last quarter of 2005.)

Total passenger revenue up 4.9%
long distance operators passenger km's and passenger journeys both up - 7.8% and 8.4% respectively

regional train operators passenger km up 4.6% and 7.2% rise in passenger journeys and revenue up a whopping 8.4%

London and Southeast operators: 2.5% up in passenger km and 7.6% rise in journeys with revenue up 6%

PQ's data refer just to the previous twelve months.

In fact, the trend has been more or less continuous since privatisation: passenger traffic on Britain's trains has grown faster in Britain throughout the past decade than almost anywhere else in Europe.

Hence problems on a number of lines which are now carrying close to their capacity. And clear proof that relatively high ratecard prices, if combined with smart use of revenue optimisation systems, absolutely don't deter traffic.

The period was Oct-Dec 2005 and seasonally adjusted to reflect the year i guess.

I wonder if the rising price of petrol has anything to do with the booming train business or is it privitization and marketing a better service - in my 36 years of traveling British trains i'd say the service today often isn't as good on the trains i take as they were years ago - certainly in terms of some seriously overcrowded regional trains i've taken - on the other hand 1st class on trains like Virgin and GNE could not be better, except for the shakey ride which you can't blame on them.

I've never had a cup of coffee or tea on a train in UK that didn't rattle the cup and saucer, invariable served complimentary on such trains in nice porcelain serving sets. rarely happens on the Continent. Track work and signalling i guess are still sub par.

The service is actually infinitely better than 10 years ago on the key dimension that really matters: frequency (though of course a battery of fare initiatives helps. Headline writers call it confusing. But tailored fares are a better way of getting people to travel than one-fare-fits-all Communist uniformity).

No-one decides not to travel just because the train rattles. And, however much people might whinge about punctuality, late trains don't actually reduce travelling.

It also helps that the British economy has now had close on 15 straight years without a quarter's decline: richer people travel more often.

And, though it's unfashionable to say so, Britain's trains have been on the receiving end of a level of investment we've simply never seen. Because we've killed off the local railway workshops, the train companies can take their pick from Europe's best value trains: Italy's Pendolino on the key high-volume intercity line; Spain's Adelante on the Cotswold line.

Ah yes, 'the train approaching platform two is the delayed' - but like flanner says there are so many trains now that it doesn't matter which train you actually end up catching - there should be one approaching your platform not too long after arriving at the station.

Seems the long-range planning would dictate a true high-speed line that is now planned to run between London, Birmingham, Manchester Glasgow and Edinburg - i believe that's the trajectory.

Too bad the costliest rail project ever in UK and one of the most in Europe i believe was the shabby rehab of the infamous West Coast line London-Glasgow - millions of pounds and marginally faster times, mainly due to Italian Pendolino technology and not track improvements i think.

Enough babbling but it's fun to talk U.K. rail, especially with someone so informed and opinionated.

Thanks for the information.

The report also says"
'Timetabled km decreased by 0.6% - regional operators had a 1.5% increase whilst long-distance fell 1.5% and London and Southeast a small decrease.

Thus trains are attracting lots more people but kilometers on the timetable decreased - thus trains statistically are more crowded.

FREIGHT- increased in terms of net tonne km more than 8%, from 5.1 billion to 5.6 billion. This is still a far cry from freight carried in the U.S. and even similar European countries.

PERFORMANCE SLIGHTLY BETTER

"Between Q3 2004-05 and Q3 2005-06 the Public Performance Measure (PPM) for trains running on time increased from 80.3% to 81.3% for the entire network."

11 train operators improved - Virgin West Coast increasing almost 15 percentage points - from a dismal 66.4% on-time trains to 81%, now just a tad under the entire system's average.

PPM decreased for 13 operators. First Great Western dropped over 8 percentage points, from 75.7% to an appalling 67.6%

My comment: Perhaps the serious neglect of the Thatcher-Beeching era when the infrastructure of the national rail system was left to largely rot in place has affected train on time running today - too few tracks that are often seriously congested, with still antiquated signalling problems, that along with driver shortages, seem to cause many of the problems. Of course this is just my opinion from looking at the situation from afar. Yet i'm optimistic that sooner rather than later the U.K. will have a rail system up to the snuff of the likes of France, Germany, Benelux, Austria, Switzerland and even Italy.

Another thing that has helped is that the train companies have listened to their customers. Most long distance trains now offer the sort of things that business travellers (the real cash-cow) want, wi-fi interweb; tables to work on etc, and they also offer lounges at major stations.

I can't imagine going city -to -city for work in any other way than the train anymore.

The biggest factor affecting rail usage is the state of the economy and empoyment. If they're doing well, then business travel and commuting increase, and it's these that contribute real revenue to the railways.
During the privatisation process, there was a hiatus, with no investment and no improvement in services. British Rail had a rolling programme of electrification which stopped before privatisation, and has not been resumed. Other European countries have continued electrifying their lines, as well as building new high-speed lines. The only high-speed line in the UK is the one from London to the Channel tunnel, and it's unlikely anyone will invest in any other high-speed lines. The train companies now get much bigger subsidies than British Rail ever received, which has helped pay for more frequent services.
Having said that, I must say that I use trains in Britain practically every day, and cannot imagine wanting to get around the country any other way. Most criticism of Britain's trains comes from people who don't use them.

<Most criticism of Britain's trains comes from people who don't use them>

please don't construe my comments as criticism when i say they system is not quite up to European snuff in my, for a foreigner, vast experience on British and Continental trains.

I think the British system is fantastic, especially in its frequency of service. Just seems the rolling stock, though improving, and crowding i've experienced on some regional trains needs to be addressed.

For example last year i went to Lincoln for a day trip from London and leaving Lincoln there was a 4-car train that would go via the coast to Cambridge i think - when i got there the train was completely packed full - chock full in the two cars in front and nobody in the back two cars, which indeed were locked and upon closer look detached. I squeezed on and more and more people squeezed on - finally a guy managed to get a bicycle on, on and on and on whilst the two empty cars sat empty.

The train took off packed like trains i'd seen in India - third world and unexplicably two empty cars had been left behind. This type of thing would never happen in Germany, France, Switzerland, etc., or at least i'm never seen sardine jamming like this only on metros. It's these inexplicable disasters that i've seen more than once that leads me to believe train administration is really not up to snuff but the whole system is really fantastic - just some retooling needed.

Oh well too much babbling again and i have seen much progress in recent years.

CALLS DOWN

The % of calls to the National Rail Enquiry service answered increased from 94.1 % to 94.6% BUT the number of such calls plunged from 12.4 million to 8.7 million. No doubt the internet is picking up the slack.

Overcrowding is a serious problem on many parts of Britain's rail system. On cross-country or commuter services, trains often consist of just two or three carriages, and are much shorter than trains in the past or on similar journeys in other countries. I often see people left behind because there is physically no room on the train. British trains may be more frequent, but most people, whether travelling to work, to the shops, or for pleasure, want to go at certain times of the day, and that is when overcrowding occurs. The train operating companies have little financial incentive to provide longer trains or to run more trains at busy times - it's cheaper for them to try to persuade people to travel at off-peak times.